Afternoon read: guns, guns, guns, guns, guns
Detail, front page of the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association’s claim.
I was really hoping not to post about this today, but am behooved.
The horrible school shooting in Newtown, Conn., last December, provoked a nationwide discussion about guns and gun control that many had thought unlikely given the high levels of polarization that surround the issue. In New York state, that discussion quickly resulted in the passage of a new gun law, the NY SAFE Act, that is one of the nation’s toughest.
But of course we know all this — guns, gun control and the constitutional and other issues they call to mind have been all over the news for weeks now. Brian Mann filed an excellent story this very morning about how gun owners and dealers in our area are dealing with the new law (or refusing to engage with it). And that’s far from the only coverage NCPR has done on the issue. Tomorrow, David Sommerstein will file a story on a Potsdam man who bought an AK-47 from a local classified ad to make a statement about assault rifles.
The ongoing guns/gun control story isn’t one I relish — the gun control dialog is frequently one of America’s least functional (it’s right up there with abortion and the national debt), and every new story reminds me of the Newtown shooting and others. But on we must go, because it’s incredibly important.
This in mind, I draw your attention to two stories in the news. First, Your News Now reports that the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association has filed the first legal challenge against the new law, claiming (PDF) it violates the US Constitution’s commerce clause, among other things (this happened yesterday). It also describes the legislation as “impermissibly vague and overboard.” This isn’t a lawsuit, yet, but it may well become one. We’ll see what happens with that.
Also, the Albany Times-Union reports that Gov. Cuomo’s approval rating has dropped 15 points since the new law. It’s still quite high, though — it was at 74 percent, now it’s at 59 percent. That’s according to a new poll from Quinnipiac University.
dave says:
January 31, 2013 at 3:29 pm
“Dave, take it easy. I saw a story that said his neighbor said he was anti-government type also after I posted that.”
“Paul, so if you hadn’t taken the time to familiarize yourself with the facts yet, why on earth would you think it is ok to post a comment challenging my understanding of the facts? Actually, you even took it a step further than that… you suggested that my understanding was somehow a product of the media “working on me.”
Maybe it is just the way I was raised, but if I did that to someone, and it turned out they were right after all, I’d feel embarrassed and would apologize.”
Gee Dave, I’ve pointed out gross errors you’ve made numerous times and I have yet to see you even address your mistakes, much less apologize.
Walker says:
January 31, 2013 at 5:33 pm
” I think that maybe (having just been through a successful armed insurrection) you can easily argue that the purpose of the amendment was to allow the citizenry to arm themselves in anyway necessary to be successful at a subsequent insurrection if it became necessary.”
Maybe not…
“That the Second Amendment was the last bulwark against the tyranny of the federal government is false,” he said. Instead, the “well-regulated militias” cited in the Constitution almost certainly referred to state militias that were used to suppress slave insurrections. Payton explained that the founders added the Second Amendment in part to reassure southern states, such as Virginia, that the federal government wouldn’t use its new power to disarm state militias as a backdoor way of abolishing slavery. (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2008/03/whitewashing-second-amendment”
Do some of your own research Walker instead of picking the one truly weird idea that is being floated lately. Read the thoughts of the men who wrote the BoR and you will find they supported the idea of the people having arms and free access to them based on that little old war they just fought, not slave rebellion. I’ve provided multiple links to various studies before, I can do it again if you want.
Walker says:
January 31, 2013 at 7:07 pm
“Pass all of the laws we want; it won’t be any more successful than our war against drugs or passing laws against any thing else that people really want to do.”
Mervel, do you see a lot of machine guns, hand grenades and sawed-off shotguns being used out there?”
Go to the Rez, you can buy all you want if you have the bucks.
Walker, Michael A. Bellesiles study has already been shown to be a bogus ( pun intended) agenda driven piece of garbage that was trashed shortly after it came out. Look into it!
knuckleheadedliberal says:
January 31, 2013 at 10:49 pm
Calm down guys! Who is calling for an end to hunting. Pointing out fallacies in other people’s reasoning doesn’t imply rescinding 100 years of custom. And I think you will find that the type of hunting that is done today is really only about 100 years old. Let’s face it, todays hunters are trying much more to be like the “sports” of the Gilded Age than they are trying to be Hawkeye of the Leatherstocking Tales. That’s fine with me. If it makes you feel like you’re more of a man, have at it. But dont confuse your fantasy ideas and Hollywood images with reality.”
You really don’t know too many hunters and gun owners, do you? Does it make you “feel like more of a man” when you show your ignorance by spouting off opinons with no basis in fact?
You’re on a roll this morning RC! I guess we taunted the happy fun ball.
How do you know I want to feel like more of a man?
” I think that maybe (having just been through a successful armed insurrection) you can easily argue that the purpose of the amendment was to allow the citizenry to arm themselves in anyway necessary to be successful at a subsequent insurrection if it became necessary.”
Does anyone really believe that the Founding Fathers really wanted the citizenry to rise up against the government they put in place. I know, I know, Jefferson talked about having periodic revolutions and all. But sometimes Jefferson was just talking out his butt. I’m sure he would have frowned on his slaves rising up and overthrowing the government he created and establishing a Black America.
Hey, I like the way that sounds — Black America. Kind of cool and a little bit dangerous. I call Trademark on the phrase Black America.
Darn, someone beat me to it! http://blackamericaweb.com/
Not only that but they got Black Planet, too!
Dave, New Tork had a 10 round limit on magazine size before the latest law, with limited exceptions. I don’t reducing that by three bullets is going to do anything other than inconvenience a lot of people and cost them money.
i don’t think they wanted the citezenry to rise up against them, they just wanted the citezenry to know they could.
it was part of the sell, the implication doesn’t sound odd.
the Madison read was good- but even that document admits the evidence is all circumstantial since Madison himself never stated anything specifically… that said i believe what i read, Madison added the bill of rights ammendment to snag virginia, tweaking the language a little from their own state constitution to woo them to ratify.
that to was part of the sell.
Hmm, possibility of dead kids vs inconvenience. I’m on the side of inconveniencing a lot of people.
Costing them money? How?
*citizenry
“Does anyone really believe that the Founding Fathers really wanted the citizenry to rise up against the government they put in place.”
Not me. But I do think that they might have thought about what we might need to do, if over time, the government became corrupt and one that took away too many liberties like the one we had just defeated. Don’t misread this as some kind of manifesto about how we are there today. I am talking about what they figured might have been necessary at some point in time.
If this isn’t about militias and it isn’t about putting down a slave insurrection (sorry Walker even you probably don’t think that is really what it is about) then Knuck what do you think the second amendment is for? Like I have said it is possible that there is no constitutional basis for gun ownership but it sounds like even the president (and he is a constitutional attorney) thinks there is.
But it is good to see that some people are expressing their view that the constitution provides no such protections for gun owners. I would like to see any politician that feels this way voice that opinion during this debate. All the cards on the table is the best way to play the game. Then let the people decide what they support.
“dead kids vs inconvenience” I think the point he was trying to make is you get both. If that is true then you have used up a massive amount of political capital that you could have used to do something else that maybe could stop some of the former.
Here it is from Wikipedia:
“As passed by the Congress:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
As ratified by the States and authenticated by Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State:
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
So there is a difference in the placement of the comma and the capitalization of Militia – and that makes all the difference. Either way though the Militia is in there.
And the right is for the “people” not a person, not a citizen. The way I read it there isn’t an unlimited personal right to bear arms guaranteed in the Constitution.
Never-the-less, I have no problem with responsible people owning reasonable numbers and kinds of arms. And I think decades or centuries of custom has weight. I dont want to buy any arms but I like the idea that I can if I want to. But I also expect that if I decide to buy a rifle, or hand gun, or get a concealed carry permit — which I just might do — I will face a background check and undergo some minimal amount of training, just like getting a drivers license.
Maybe some of you wouldn’t trust me if I had a concealed carry permit.
School shootings are already costing us lots of money. Inconvenience is a small price to pay for the chance to save a few lives. Lots of people complained about inconvenience when they mandated everyone wear a seatbelt but the proponents said it would save lives. It did.
What about texting when we drive? Should we be denied the convenience to texting just because there is some chance we kill someone while we arent being attentive to our driving?
Ignoring court rulings for now and just looking at the constitution. It is clear that the intent is for some kind of militia I would agree.
That would support some folks here that feel that they should not be limited in the type of weapon they can access. If this is for a military purpose than how can we infringe on the ability to arm “the people” with military style weapons?
Obviously I don’t support the idea but that seems like a pretty fair interpretation. Many people portray this thinking as insane. YOU DON’T NEED 10 BULLETS TO KILL A DEER!!
This is an interesting part of the Miller case:
“Therefore, “[i]n the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a ‘shotgun having a barrel of less than 18 inches in length’ at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well– regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that its use could contribute to the common defense.”
http://www.law.cornell.edu/anncon/html/amdt2_user.html#amdt2_hd2
That seems like a logical reading. You don’t need a sawed off shotgun since it isn’t ordinary military equipment. Is a military style assault weapon considered “ordinary military equipment”??
Was there court action challenging the earlier federal assault weapons ban? I am curious to see how it could have been upheld in view of this 1973 case above?
Perhaps something like Switzerland is what the founders were hoping for with the second amendment:
http://world.time.com/2012/12/20/the-swiss-difference-a-gun-culture-that-works/
“…sorry Walker even you probably don’t think that [militias putting down a slave insurrections] is really what it is about…”
Actually Paul, I did– it’s a pretty convincing paper. Unfortunately RC is right– the work of Michael A. Bellesiles really was widely discredited for poor, even fraudulent scholarship, and the paper I linked to used Bellesiles as a source for some of its arguments, like the bit about the citizens having been less well-armed than is commonly thought. It’s discouraging that this kind of “research” gets cited years after it has been shown to have faulty antecedents. Worse yet, it invalidates some of the ideas in that paper that may, in fact, be sound (like the idea that there was arms industry money behind much of the “insurectionist theory”?). Rancid’s proposal that we all do our own research is all very well and good, but you’re talking years of study. While I’m fond of history, I have no particular desire to delve that deeply into the arcana of the Constitution.
Walker, my hat is off to you for recognizing that the premise of the research is flawed. Good for you man!
It doesn’t take years of study. Go to places like gunsite.com and start there. Yes, it’s pro gun, but the alternative is reading more of what you’re already getting.
Paul, you have to look into what they considered “the militia” at the time. IIRC the quote, it’s something like “all males between the ages of 16 and 64 except for some public officers” or words to that effect. And yes, a “sawed off shotgun” is or was a military issue gun at one point. Today a barrel cannot be less than 18″ long on a shotgun. Our military has used them as short as 14″ IIRC and our NYSP carry 14″ shotguns now.
Knuckle, I was in a lousy mood this AM. Frozen pipes you see!
I don’t know who said anything about inconvenience, but that isn’t the issue IMO. It’s a great inconvenience to ave to get a pistol permit in NYS, a hassle actually and expensive too. I’m not arguing to do away with permits. I’m not even arguing about background checks. I’m arguing that this is step one in a drive to outlaw guns altogether or make them so difficult, expensive and limited to own that it’s the same as outlawing them. That isn’t right, it won’t stop gun crime and it appears, based on 40+ years of watching this battle, to be the aim of the anti-gun crowd.
And no, the Founders didn’t want the citizens to rise up against the gov’t. But they weren’t any too optimistic that the day would never come that gov’t didn’t have to be fought, as they had just done a few years earlier. What they wanted was a gov’t that worked for the citizens and upheld their rights and not the other way around. It was the last resort and it was an important right in their minds, right after freedom of religion and the press.
Walker, my bad- that’s guncite.com, not gunsite. Cite, as in legal citation.
Paul, I don’t have time at the moment to go through that link you provided on Miller, but I did note right off some language that I disagree with- that the BoR somehow does not apply to the individual in the 2nd Amendment. People who take that stand somehow seem to believe that the BoR all applies to the individuals rights- except for the 2nd Amendment! In everything else “the people” means all the citizens, except in the 2nd. That makes absolutely no sense in the context of the document. I don’t see how anyone can make the argument that the BoR is about individual liberty and then point to the 2nd and say it’s about gov’ts rights to form a militia. It defies logic and it defies the words of the Founders. Maybe no one else here has ever considered that. It jumped out at me some years back and I find I’m not the only one that noticed it by any means. If the BoR is about recognizing individual rights, rights all people enjoy simply by being Americans, then how can anyone say the 2nd is an exception? The BoR is not about the rights of the gov’t, it’s about the rights of the people. These are “God given”, unalienable rights. These are rights enumerated and recognized by gov’t as so basic and important that they went to great lengths to ensure they would be forever enshrined. Gov’t doesn’t ahve the right to tell you how to vote or worship and they don’t have the right to take away your ability to protect yourself. It’s pretty simple.
Paul,
Yes that is what I think, certainly they had a Swiss style model in mind. The idea that we would have this massive standing army when no war was going on; in fact the largest military machine on the planet, would have seemed crazy to the people at that time, those kind of things were what places like England and France did, the big colonial powers of the time. The vision we had for the US at that time was certainly more like the Swiss model of citizen soldiers and also neutrality, not being involved in these entanglements. I don’t think they wanted to be like the colonial empire’s of the time, which is relatively ironic given how we have ended up.
Maybe we should pass a law saying that yes you can have the weapons you want including assault rifles, with one condition, if you own a gun you are automatically drafted into the US military and can be called to serve by your state in times of emergency if you are between the ages of 18-65.
“I’ve seen people here going on and on about left wing conspiracies that had little basis in fact. ”
“I’ve pointed out gross errors you’ve made numerous times”
I started to type up a post trying to explain to you the difference between people who believe in absurd, dangerous conspiracies and people who believe things that you simply happen to disagree with (but that do have a basis in facts)… however, it quickly dawned on me that since you are firmly in the camp of the former, it wasn’t going to do much good. I would be like trying to explain to this guy in Alabama that the government really isn’t out to get him.
“That makes absolutely no sense in the context of the document. I don’t see how anyone can make the argument that the BoR is about individual liberty and then point to the 2nd and say it’s about gov’ts rights to form a militia. It defies logic and it defies the words of the Founders.”
It is the only place in the document where a right granted to “the people” was qualified by additional language, therefore – those who read complete sentences – take that qualifier into consideration.
There has been very little supreme court action on the second amendment. Anyone can disagree all they want with the decisions made by the court but they are the law of the land.
DC versus Heller did say that the rights under the second amendment does adhere to individuals.
They said this:
” Although accepting that the historical and contemporaneous use of the phrase “keep and bear Arms” often arose in connection with military activities, the Court noted that its use was not limited to those contexts.4 Further, the Court found that the phrase “well regulated Militia” referred not to formally organized state or federal militias, but to the pool of “able-bodied men” who were available for conscription.5 Finally, the Court reviewed contemporaneous state constitutions, post-enactment commentary, and subsequent case law to conclude that the purpose of the right to keep and bear arms extended beyond the context of militia service to include self-defense. ”
So yes the court has ruled now that you are correct RC (pretty simple? maybe) and it does give you the right to protect yourself with a gun.
However the remaining question is what type of gun. RC my point was not on sawed off shotguns. Obviously you disagree with the court (not with me I didn’t make that decision) on that particular decision and how it is now considered federal law. My point was there they were confirming that a gun that would be considered “ordinary military equipment” (for example an assault weapon with a big clip) is protected under the constitution. If you put Miller and Heller together it seems to me that you get what RC wants, an affirmation of constitutional protection for a person to have an assault weapon with a big clip for self defense or any other legal purpose. It seems to me (and I don’t know that I like the idea as much as RC) that a federal assault weapons ban could be easily overturned by the supreme court.
So my question is – should the debate and the political capital be spent on something that could be legal and effective. Look at the story on Switzerland. They do have what you would call universal background checks. So Knuck is probably onto something there. The other thing they seems to have is something that has broken down over time in our own county:
“One of the reasons the crime rate in Switzerland is low despite the prevalence of weapons — and also why the Swiss mentality can’t be transposed to the current American reality — is the culture of responsibility and safety that is anchored in society and passed from generation to generation. Kids as young as 12 belong to gun groups in their local communities, where they learn sharpshooting. The Swiss Shooting Sports Association runs about 3,000 clubs and has 150,000 members, including a youth section. Many members keep their guns and ammunition at home, while others choose to leave them at the club. And yet, despite such easy access to pistols and rifles, “no members have ever used their guns for criminal purposes,” says Max Flueckiger, the association’s spokesperson.”
Read more: http://world.time.com/2012/12/20/the-swiss-difference-a-gun-culture-that-works/#ixzz2Jg0d261w
“those who read complete sentences”. Dave you just can’t resist being a snark and insulting folks on this blog can you?
I will have to do some more research. Like I said I did see that this guy in Alabama was defined by one neighbor as being “anti-government”. Now I will have to go look for the reference to that fact that he now appears to be someone who “thinks that the government really isn’t out to get him”?
“Dave, New Tork had a 10 round limit on magazine size before the latest law, with limited exceptions. I don’t reducing that by three bullets is going to do anything other than inconvenience a lot of people and cost them money.”
Again, the amount of bullets in a clip is the amount of bullets someone can unload into human beings before they have to take a break to reload.
In Tucson, that break was what allowed the shooter to be stopped. Reducing the number of bullets he had in that clip, even by one, would have saved a live at that shooting.
So while I’m sorry that you will feel “inconvenienced”, I think I’ll choose to prioritize saving lives over your convenience. Going from 10 bullets to 7 bullets means that a shooter can put 3 less bullets into bodies before reloading. That is not insignificant.
But Dave the point is that I would imagine that no one who is planning on a killing spree will load 7 instead of 10? That part of the law seems nonsensical to me.
Paul, second amendment debates have long revolved around the choice of some people to ignore the first half of the amendment’s sentence and place all weight on the second half. Implying that some people do not read complete sentences is simply a reference to that. I wouldn’t get too sensitive about it, especially since it wasn’t directed at you.
As for this… “Now I will have to go look for the reference to that fact that he now appears to be someone who “thinks that the government really isn’t out to get him”?”
An anti government survivalist who kidnapped a kid while on his way to answer charges in a court or law and is now hiding out in a bunker? Connect the dots.
“Yes, it’s pro gun, but the alternative is reading more of what you’re already getting.”
Actually, I’d like to get my info from someone who wasn’t trying to make a case for or against guns– someone who was simply trying to present the truth. I thought the Carl T. Bogus piece was just such a source, and I think Bogus may have thought so too when he wrote it. It was published in a law review after all. But he got snookered by Bellesiles “research”. Sorry to have muddied the water here with it, however briefly.
In any case, I don’t think the only alternatives are pro- and anti- sources. There have to be some sources out there that are objective.
“But Dave the point is that I would imagine that no one who is planning on a killing spree will load 7 instead of 10? That part of the law seems nonsensical to me.”
Yeah, I agree. That you are allowed to have a clip that holds 10 but can technically only put 7 in it seems awkward to me too. For that to be effective you would have to limit the actual clips themselves so they only hold 7.
I’ve been trying to find concrete information about that part of the law, and have struggled. You have any links? For example, does that only apply to grandfathered magazines, or is there something else to it we are missing?
I would guess that the 7 rounds was a compromise between 5 and 10. Definitely not well thought out.
“It seems to me (…) that a federal assault weapons ban could be easily overturned by the supreme court.”
Seems to me that if that were true, the NRA would have tried it in ’94, no?
I took some time to read parts of the actual law, and if I am reading it properly, currently owned 10 round magazines were grandfathered in.
So the awkwardness of that part of the law only applies to the grandfathered clips that people may already own – from here on out you can only buy clips that hold 7 rounds.
I guess it was an attempt at a compromise. Not very elegant, but I suspect most people would prefer that to the alternative, which would have been making them completely illegal.
Now here’s something that’s really worth getting riled up about:
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2013/01/returning-from-cruise-with-family-woman-jailed-over-22-year-old-warrant/
What a nutty society we live in.
a disney dream cruise and a trip to california! bonus!
“I would guess that the 7 rounds was a compromise between 5 and 10. Definitely not well thought out.”
maybe the plan all along was to give clip manufacturers economic stimuli making the new 7 round clips.
perhaps a small consolation for the models they may no longer sell?
(again, sarcasm)
If the economy is so bad where do all the people who run out to buy an AR-15 come from?
Maybe this could be Obama’s new stimulus, threaten to make stuff illegal.
RC, it doesn’t help you any but we did some long overdue work on our house last year and this is the first winter ever that I didn’t have to crawl under the kitchen to thaw pipes.
And don’t use a torch! I know, everyone does it, I’ve done it myself, but a heat gun works great and you won’t burn your house down.
yes knuck, its all about getting us to spend money!
those 200w halogen temp lites can generate ALOT of heat in a pinch. heats up a meatball hero real well too…
You’re referring to the Gabrielle Giffords shooting in Tucson, right? Loughner had a pistol with a 33 round mag. Big difference between that and 10.
Switzerland can’t really be used for a comparison. The reason the Swiss own so many assault rifles and keep them at home is that all young men have to become citizen soldiers and have to keep their weapons at home. The Swiss do not keep a standing professional army, they call up all of these guys with their guns if they need the army. Which I honestly think was the thinking behind some of the thinking behind the 2nd ammendment. It would let the states have a national guard and would help with us not needing a standing army.
I do think it is interesting that the Swiss have very low rates of murders with all of these homes owning assault weapons, but that also makes sense. It is the same reason that areas of the country in the US with very high weapon ownership rates have low rates of crime, it is about why people own guns and how they treat them.
If you look at NYS violent crimes by county we see the same trends. Per-capita violent crime is much higher in Bronx county than it is in St. Lawrence County, yet St. Lawrence County has higher per-capita gun ownership rates.
Now the Coumo’s proposals will have little impact on citizens in the Bronx, as they don’t hunt by ammunition or own many guns, yet it will impact many families in St. Lawrence County. It is just wrong headed and based on flawed thinking about guns.
“You’re referring to the Gabrielle Giffords shooting in Tucson, right? Loughner had a pistol with a 33 round mag. Big difference between that and 10.”
Exactly.
What Tucson showed us is that number of bullets in the clip can directly relate to the number of people killed.
So, the point is that if he was limited to 10 bullets, instead of 33, then he would have killed less people.
Likewise, if he was limited to 7, instead of 33 or 10, then he would have killed even less people.
Less bullets in a clip will equal less bullets in a human body.